THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels)

by Needham, Jake

  I was going around in circles, of course, and I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop thinking about Anita altogether, but as long as that damned envelope was sitting there staring at me I was powerless to do it. Was I going to open it and read what was inside, or wasn’t I?

  And all at once I saw exactly what I was going to do. As with so many other big decisions in life, I didn’t know when I had decided. I only realized that I had already decided.

  I continued to smoke my Montecristo and think about it for a while. There would be no going back, of course. So I wanted to be sure. I wanted to be absolutely sure.

  I smoked the Montecristo right down to the butt and gave myself as much time as possible to reconsider, but eventually it was finished. I bent forward, gently tapped the cigar out against the bottom of the ashtray, and dropped what was left of it inside.

  I was sure. I was absolutely sure.

  I slid open the box of wooden matches I had been turning around in my hand and I lit one. I held the ivory envelope between my thumb and forefinger and moved one corner back and forth through the flame until the paper caught. I shook out the match, but I continued to hold the burning envelope until the heat became too much for my hand. Finally I dropped it into the ashtray and flipped the spent match in on top of it. I sat very still and watched until nothing was left of the envelope except curly wisps of black ash scattered over the remains of my cigar. And I kept watching until the flame had burned itself completely out.

  After a while I stood up and walked over to the window. The neon of the casino signs were burning hot in the soft grey light of the early evening and they infused Macau with a shimmering radiance I hadn’t really noticed before. The hard, unpleasant edges of a tough town had been blurred into blemish-free beauty. Suddenly Macau was like an aging movie star with great makeup, better lighting, and a Vaseline-smeared lens.

  It didn’t look half bad to me…

  TWENTY

  IT WAS A LITTLE before eleven the next morning when Shepherd got out of a cab in Barra Square. Freddy was sitting behind the wheel of a dirty brown Toyota parked in a little cul de sac at the bottom of Rua da Barra. The car was so nondescript as to be functionally invisible and, exactly as Freddy had intended, Shepherd didn’t pay the slightest attention to him.

  Freddy had a clear view of most of the square and he watched as Shepherd walked toward the temple gate. He wasn’t an expert in surveillance, but he knew a little bit about it, and he was reasonably certain Shepherd wasn’t being followed. The movement of people around him all appeared random. No one seemed to speed up or slow down in response to Shepherd’s pace.

  He gave it a few minutes so he could be sure, but when nothing changed he got out of the Toyota and walked slowly through the square, following more or less the same path Shepherd had followed.

  When Freddy reached the temple gate he stopped suddenly, spun around, and started walking quickly back to the car as if he had forgotten something. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but he thought he saw sudden movement out of the corner of his eye so he stopped again and looked around very slowly like a man trying to decide what to do. Which was exactly what he was.

  Had that movement been someone who had him under surveillance? He thought it might have been possible that Shepherd might have watchers, but he was pretty certain that he was in the clear. Had he been careless and missed something?

  When he got back to the Toyota, Freddy slid behind the wheel again and carefully scanned Barra Square, but he saw no one who looked out of place or who seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. He had probably been mistaken about the sudden movement. But still…

  He watched a while longer and thought about whether he should walk away to be on the safe side. If he took much longer to make up his mind, he knew he wouldn’t have anything to decide because Shepherd would get impatient and leave. He read the man as somewhat abrupt and frequently cranky. Those weren’t really bad characteristics in a protector, but Shepherd was still a long way from becoming his protector, wasn’t he?

  He had to make up his mind right now.

  Go, or walk away?

  This might well be the best chance he would ever have. And he didn’t like the idea of blowing it out of nothing more than paranoia. He had grown up with paranoia. Paranoia was part of his soul. He thought he had to learn to control it, not let it control him. He supposed it was time to find out if he really had.

  He took another careful look at Barra Square. When he still saw nothing unusual, he shook his head, got back out of the Toyota again, and walked toward the temple.

  SHEPHERD WAS SITTING ON the same rock in front of the Hall of Benevolence where he had been sitting the first time they met. Apparently a man of habit. Or perhaps there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. That was possible, too, he supposed.

  “You’re late,” Shepherd snapped as soon as he saw Freddy coming up the steps. “It’s hot out here.”

  It was hot. Shepherd was right about that. Freddy tried to shape his face into an appropriately apologetic expression. That’s how westerners saw Asians, wasn’t it? Mild mannered and deferential? He didn’t do those things very well. Was that how he would have to behave all the time when he was in Hawaii? If it was, God help him.

  “I am very sorry,” Freddy murmured in what he thought was the correct tone of voice. “I was only being careful.”

  “Careful about what?”

  “I thought there might be some possibility you were being followed.”

  Shepherd looked surprised at that, but at least it seemed to shut him up.

  Freddy stood close enough to Shepherd not to have to speak loudly and turned his body slightly to the side so he could watch the steps behind them while they talked.

  “You saw the story in the newspapers?” he asked.

  “I saw it.”

  “So now you believe that I have knowledge worth trading for political asylum?”

  “Now I believe that you know someone in North Korea, or maybe you know someone who knows someone in North Korea. That’s all that newspaper story tells me. That’s all I believe now.”

  Freddy had not expected Shepherd to be so hard to persuade. He had expected Shepherd to be more interested, more enthusiastic. He had very little experience dealing with Americans, almost none really. Were they all this skeptical of everything?

  “I want to go to Hawaii. I want you to get me political asylum in Hawaii.”

  Freddy instantly regretted both what he said and the way he said it. He sounded petulant, like a kid addressing a parent who was denying him a treat. He had to be careful about that. He didn’t want Shepherd to feel he had control of the situation.

  Shepherd smiled, but he didn’t say anything.

  “What else can I tell you,” Freddy asked, trying for a recovery, “to convince you to help me get political asylum in America? “

  “You could start with who you are.”

  Freddy hesitated. Yes, he could tell Shepherd who he was. He had no doubt at all that would get Shepherd’s full and undivided attention. But he wasn’t ready to do that yet. He wasn’t sure yet that he entirely trusted Shepherd. And besides, that was his last card. If he showed it now, he would have nothing left. He had learned that from his father, at least. Always have one card to play that nobody expects. That is how you stay on top of people. You keep them guessing.

  “I am sorry, but I cannot do that yet.”

  “Then, pal,” Shepherd said as he slid off the rock into a standing position and offered his hand, “it’s been nice knowing you. I wish you all the best.”

  Out beyond Shepherd’s outstretched hand, Freddy noticed the two men coming up the steps from below. They caught his eye because they both wore cheap looking grey suits with white shirts and ties that glinted like polyester. No one wore a suit in Macau, at least no one visiting the Ah-Ma Temple at high noon.

  Both men had on very dark glasses that hid part of their faces and it took a moment to register with Freddy that they were Koreans. />
  But the moment it did, he knew he was in trouble.

  THE TWO MEN STOPPED about thirty feet away and moved slightly apart. They took their time about it, and their movements were slow and measured. For a moment he had the crazy thought that these two guys were about to break into a coordinated dance routine. Sort of a Korean version of the Blues Brothers. But then Freddy saw both men reach under their jackets almost simultaneously, he saw the butts of the handguns coming into view, and he stopped kidding himself.

  Shepherd obviously noticed the alarm on Freddy’s face and began to turn his head to see what had caused it. For a moment Freddy felt almost like a disinterested observer. Would Shepherd get his head around before the men started shooting at them, or would the gunfire come as a complete surprise to him?

  To Freddy’s surprise, Shepherd began to react before his head was more than halfway through its turn. Both arms drove straight out, palms open and extended, and he shoved Freddy toward the big rock on which he had been sitting. Freddy stumbled and fell, but fortunately rolled a few feet down the hillside behind the rock. Shepherd dived down right on top of him. At the same moment Shepherd landed, two shots ricocheted off the rock right where they had been standing.

  Freddy realized almost at once that he hadn’t actually heard the shots, only the ricochets. The men were using silencers. They weren’t there to scare somebody. They were there to kill somebody.

  The hillside where he and Shepherd lay was steep and rocky, and there was no place to hide. About fifty feet directly below them was the back wall of The First Palace of the Holy Mountain. Freddy knew that right below it was the entry gate and Barra Square.

  Even while he was still lying there on the ground thinking that they might be safe if they could get that far, Shepherd was already moving. He rose into a half crouch and gave Freddy another shove. Freddy began to slide on the loose dirt, bounced off a rock, rolled over more times than he could count, and finally bumped into the back wall of The First Palace of the Holy Mountain.

  Freddy lifted his head and shook the dirt out of his eyes. The two men were about a hundred feet above him now, aiming their guns down, and he scrambled around the corner as more shots zinged off the wall of the temple. He looked around and saw that somehow Shepherd had gotten there before him.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Shepherd bellowed.

  Freddy didn’t know what to say so he shook his head and said nothing.

  Shepherd looked exasperated, but he grabbed Freddy by the arm, turned him downhill, and snapped, “Stay with me!”

  Thirty feet more and they stumbled out from behind The First Palace of the Holy Mountain right into the middle of a huge mass of Chinese tourists. They were grouped obediently around a pretty young girl wearing a red uniform and holding a red pennant over her head. Freddy had never thought he would be glad to see a huge mass of Chinese tourists anywhere, but right here and right now they seemed to him to have been sent by whatever god it was that ruled over the Ah-Ma Temple.

  Shepherd was already pushing his way through the crowd and Freddy fell in right behind him. The Chinese muttered in irritation at the rude westerner and his chubby companion who were suddenly in their midst, and Freddy risked a quick glance over his shoulder to see if the two shooters were coming down the steps to intercept them. He couldn’t see anything. The mob of Chinese jammed the walkway so completely that he couldn’t see anything past them. If the two men were coming after them, at least it would take them a while to get through.

  “For Christ’s sake, keep up!” Shepherd snapped, glancing back over his shoulder.

  A moment later they were down the steps, through the gate, and out into Barra Square. Shepherd turned left and plunged through the crowds, but Freddy turned right. He ran past the kiosk in the middle of the square and made straight for where he had left the Toyota.

  His hand shook as he shoved the key into the ignition. He said a little prayer as he turned it and it must have been answered because the old car started immediately. His eyes were on the square as he lurched away from the curb and he barely missed an old man riding a battered motorbike. But he couldn’t see either of the two men coming after him.

  Thirty feet and a hard left, fifty feet more and a hard right, and he was in the Rua do Almirante Sergio, losing himself in the heavy traffic moving north along the harbor toward the Chinese border.

  Freddy knew he couldn’t go home, but he almost never stayed there anyway. He usually slept in some hotel. He liked to move around, and Macau was the perfect place to do that. It had a lot of hotels and most of them were very big.

  It would take them a while to find him even if they came looking, but he wasn’t sure they would. He was thinking the men were there to disrupt his meeting with Shepherd, and they had done that. Hunting him down now might not serve any purpose, and it could cause whoever was behind it all sorts of problems.

  No, the more Freddy thought about it the surer he became that he was safe, at least for a while. He wondered what had happened to Shepherd? If he was safe, too?

  He hoped so. He didn’t want any more on his conscience than there already was.

  TWENTY ONE

  “WHO THE FUCK IS he, Raymond?”

  The lunch rush was on at Henri’s, the place was packed, and everyone there stopped eating and stared. A dirty, disheveled American nose to nose with Raymond and screaming into his face was something they didn’t see every day. At least, not as far as I knew…

  Raymond made little shushing gestures with his open hands and tried to back away, but I wasn’t having any of it.

  “I said, who the fuck is he?”

  It had taken me less than fifteen minutes to jog to Henri’s from the Ah-Ma Temple, but it was uphill and down and I had been looking over my shoulder most of the way so I was breathing pretty hard when I got there. I had no idea what had happened to Freddy. I lost track of him somewhere in Barra Square. Had the gunmen gotten him? I hoped not, but…

  “One more chance, Raymond, and then I’m going to lose it!”

  Raymond’s face showed pure amazement. “You mean for you this isn’t losing it?”

  I tried not to laugh and spoil my outrage, but I couldn’t help it. Raymond jumped in quickly before I had time to work up a fresh mad on.

  “Come back to the office,” he said, “and you can explain to me what you’re talking about.”

  Raymond swept me in front of him through a door into the kitchen, then through another door next to the walk-in freezer. Behind it was a small office, and I let myself be nudged inside. A passing waiter had four bottles of Macau Beer on his tray and Raymond grabbed two of them, followed me into the office, and kicked the door shut behind him. I sucked down half of my beer in one pull while Raymond settled into a chair behind the desk.

  “Now what is this all about?” he asked.

  I collapsed on a beaten up wooden chair in front of the desk and took another pull on my beer.

  And I told him.

  “SO THAT’S WHY YOU look like shit,” Raymond said.

  “Rolling down a hill trying to get away from two triad shooters is a dirty business.”

  “How do you know the shooters were triad?”

  “You have some other kind of gangsters in Macau, Raymond? Who do you think they were, the UCLA trap shooting team?” I held up both hands, palms out like a traffic cop. “And please don’t tell me this happens all the time here. I’ve already heard that one. These guys weren’t plinking for the fun of it. They were there to kill somebody.”

  “Perhaps you misinterpreted what happened.”

  “If that’s the kind of shit I’m going to get from you, pal, you better find me another beer real quick.”

  “Well, isn’t it possible—”

  “Horse shit, Raymond. These two triad goons were shooting at us. And they sure as hell intended to kill at least one of us.”

  “Okay, let’s assume for a moment that’s true. How do you know they were after Freddy? You could have been the
target.”

  I had thought long and hard about that possibility the whole time I was jogging toward Henri’s and looking back over my shoulder half expecting to see these guys coming after me on motorcycles. When you’ve had to duck bullets twice in the same week, it certainly does raise the possibility that you’re wearing a target on your chest.

  It raised that possibility, but I didn’t think it was true.

  I honestly couldn’t think of a single reason anyone would want to take the risk of shooting me, certainly not in public. The story about me being hired by MGM to track down the source of the money flowing through their casino hadn’t become public knowledge yet, and I wasn’t involved in anything else in Macau that was even slightly controversial.

  Besides, if someone did want me dead, they didn’t have to engage in theatrics like spraying the outside of the Wynn with gunfire or staging a shoot out in the middle of the Ah-Ma Temple. I was visible and accessible and didn’t have any security. There were a hundred times every day when anyone could walk up behind me or knock on my door and make me quietly dead.

  No, I might have been uncomfortably close to the business end of some bullets recently, but it didn’t make any sense to conclude they were meant for me. I didn’t know who the target outside the Wynn might have been, if there was a target at all, but I didn’t have the slightest doubt who the target was today. It was Freddy.

  “Who the fuck is he, Raymond?”

  Raymond looked so uncomfortable that I almost felt sorry for him.

  “I can’t tell you, Jack. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I gave him my word that I wouldn’t.”

  I stopped feeling sorry for him.

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Confucius say, ‘There are things a man will do and things he will not’.”

  “Oh crap. Don’t try to pull that Asia wisdom horseshit on me, pal. Confucius didn’t say any such thing.”

  Raymond shrugged and fell silent.

  “You got me into this, Raymond. You set me up, whether you intended to or not.”